Carrying Heavy Loads

We didn’t ask for life’s difficulties to show up. Struggling against them makes it worse.

Photo by Michal Balog on Unsplash

Carrying a full box of books at arm’s length is painful, if not impossible.

Yet the heaviest things are made lighter when you hold them close — not at a distance.

The heaviness… is it loss? illness? depression? chronic pain? Is it loving someone with these loads?

We want to avoid the heavy things. We don’t want to feel their weight, we don’t want to think about them, we will deal with them later (we promise). Such heaviness burdens the body, emotions, and mind.

Nobody asks for these heavy things to show up. And yet here they are.

Avoiding them, fighting them, and ignoring them only works temporarily, often worsening the weight.

If you have to carry these burdens — and we all do — holding them closer works.

These heavy things, like our box of books, become more manageable when they are held tightly, pressed against your torso, squeezed by biceps, forearms, and clasped hands.

We bring the loss, illness, depression, chronic pain, and worry closer by acknowledging the distress of their weight. They are real, and we can’t fight them anymore. They aren’t going away.

We pull the heavy things nearer by looking at them honestly, by caring for ourselves as we ache, by telling someone else what we carry — when we’d rather smile and say “I’m fine.”

As we let go of the struggle to rid ourselves of life’s inescapable heaviness, things shift. We get better at focusing less on the strain.

We notice there is more to life than what weighs us down. We can carry these loads and still connect with what matters.

Over time, something else happens. You are not dragging as much; you are moving more freely.

Life’s load has not lessened — your arms have grown stronger. The heaviest things are made lighter when you hold them closer.

kek

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Note: This post was initially published on my Medium site.

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